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Nuclear Shutdown

Now or never

“I feel guilty and sorry for the
children. They did not choose nuclear power plants, they did not choose to be
born; but it is them that have to suffer in the future.”

“By not protesting against
nuclear power I allowed this accident to happen. If we go in the same direction,
I don’t see any future.”

“If we [are to] make a
difference, we must decide now, it is now or never.”

Potential future of Fukushima children written in
Chernobyl

The potential future for the Fukushima children victims is
written starkly in the government birth and death registries of the heavily
contaminated regions in the Chernobyl fallout; dedicated doctors, scientists,
and ordinary citizens are bearing witness to the humanitarian disaster still
unfolding.

There have been at least close to
a million excess deaths, with general mortality rates doubled or tripled [2] (Chernobyl
Deaths Top a Million Based on Real Evidence, SiS 55). A diversity of
illnesses continue to claim lives including those of children: birth abnormalities,
cancers, cardiovascular malfunction, premature aging, defects affecting
practically every organ system, often multiple illnesses in the same
individual, all associated with exposure to radioactivity in the body either
inhaled or ingested in contaminated food. The number
of children in Belarus has fallen by more than 27% since 2000, despite increasing
birth rates. The horrific health impacts of the nuclear accident are still
emerging more than 26 years later because the land is still contaminated, and
the genetic/epigenetic legacy is just as long lasting.

Many of the deaths and sicknesses
could have been avoided had governments not done their best to suppress the
evidence from the start, even to the point of persecuting doctors and
scientists - who put their lives and careers at risk in trying to save the
children -including cutting off major funding for a simple treatment that would
have reduced the children’s radioactive burden [3, 4] (Apple
Pectin for Radioprotection, The Pectin
Controversy, SiS 55).

Fukushima fallout as big as Chernobyl

Chernobyl was generally recognized as the biggest nuclear
accident in history. Within days of the first explosion, Fukushima was reclassified
by the International Atomic Energy Agency to the highest grade 7 – with
“widespread health and environmental effects” – the same as Chernobyl [5] (Fukushima Nuclear
Crisis, SiS 50).

But as in Chernobyl, the
government has withheld vital information from people, the international
regulators are downplaying the health impacts, and to this day, the total radioactivity
released from the stricken Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant is still
unknown [6] (Truth
about Fukushima, SiS 55).

The most authoritative estimates
based on measurements carried out by the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty
monitoring stations around the globe indicate that the total radioactivity
released from the Fukushima accident is at least as great as from Chernobyl;
some 15 times the official estimate, and much more global in reach [7] (Fukushima
Fallout Rivals Chernobyl, SiS 55). The radioactivity in the waste water discharged
into the Pacific Ocean is already the single largest release into the ocean in history.

The Japanese government’s own measurements
show widespread contamination, with levels of radioactivity outside the
official evacuation zone so high that within a matter of weeks, people
would have been exposed to 10-200 times the legal limit dose for a whole year
[6]. Evacuation especially of children from those areas is a matter of the
utmost urgency. Yet the Japanese government is still refusing to do that.

Nuclear reactors to restart
despite lag in crisis plan

On 16 June 2012, Japanese premier
Noda ordered the restart of two nuclear reactors amid widespread protest, and
new crisis plans drafted after the Fukushima disaster are still to be
implemented by any local community living near the nuclear power reactors. The Ohi nuclear reactors to be restarted are a case in point.

If a Fukushima-style meltdown were to happen, the only
route for escape or sending help is [8] “a winding, cliff-hugging road often
closed by snow in winter or clogged by beachgoers in summer.” Radioactivity
from the meltdown could contaminate Lake Biwa, the country’s biggest freshwater
source serving 14 million people. The reactors sit on Wakasa Bay, a region home
to 13 commercial reactors. Some of the crucial measures designed to protect
residents in the new crisis plans are not ready, such as a raised seawall in
2013 and an onsite command centre by March 2o16. And filter vents that could
reduce radiation leaks to the environment won’t be ready for three more years.

The
Fukui provincial government has only started survey in June 2012 for a
multibillion dollar project to repair the sole route to the Ohi nuclear plant
and to add a new alternative evacuation road.

Governor
Yukuko Kada of neighbouring Shiga province accuses the central government of
still ignoring the residents, and says it has still refused to provide
radiation simulation data she has asked for in order to compile an evacuation
map and to study the impact on Lake Biwa, as another Fukushima-class crisis
could “instantly make the lake water undrinkable.”

Public opposition to resuming operations remains high
because of the Fukushima disaster and a lingering distrust of the nuclear
industry as well as the pro-nuclear regulators and governments.

But the public
have good reason on their side.

Big nuclear accidents 200 times more often than previous
estimates

Scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in
Mainz have calculated that catastrophic nuclear accidents such as Chernobyl and
Fukushima may occur once every 10 to 20 years, based on the operating hours of
all civil nuclear reactors and the number of nuclear meltdowns that have
occurred [9]. This is more than 200 times as often than estimated in the past.
The research team also determined that in the event of such a major accident,
half of the long-lived radioactive caesium-137 would be spread over an area extending
more than 1 000 km away from the reactor. Western Europe in particular is
likely to be contaminated about once in 50 years by more than 40kBq of Cs-137
per square metre, a level upwards that the International Atomic Energy Agency
(IAEA) defines as ‘contaminated’.

Their calculations
showed that if a single nuclear meltdown were to occur in Western Europe, ~ 28
million people would be affected by contamination of more than 40 kBq per
square metre. In southern Asia, the dense population would put the number of
people affected by a major nuclear accident at ~34 million, while in the
eastern USA and in East Asia this would be 14 to 21 million.

Fukushima has triggered Germany’s exit from their nuclear
power programme. It is to close down all 17 nuclear reactors and replace them
with renewable energies, mostly wind and solar, and has invested €200 billion
(8 % of the country’s GDP) towards that end [10]. “Germany's exit from the nuclear energy program will reduce
the national risk of radioactive contamination.” said Director and lead author
of the Max Planck study Jos Lelieveld, an atmosphere chemist [9]. “However, an
even stronger reduction would result if Germany’s neighbours were to switch off
their reactors. Not only do we need an in-depth and public analysis of the
actual risks of nuclear accidents. In light of our findings I believe an
internationally coordinated phasing out of nuclear energy should also be
considered.”

Some governments have too cosy a relationship with the
nuclear industry

The UK government is chief among those countries with
nuclear ambitions undaunted by the Fukushima disaster. It is still determined
to go ahead with the construction of at least 10 new reactors, despite plenty
of counter-evidence available to it, which include evidence that an adequate
supply of low carbon energy could be produced without it, to the point of
misleading Parliament by omission of the evidence in order to get the decision
through [11] (UK’s Nuclear Illusion,
SiS 55), and with a huge public subsidy. Why?

The most likely explanation is a too-cosy
relationship between the government and the nuclear industry, which applies in
other countries like France [12] (The
True Costs of French Nuclear Power , SiS 53) with close links to
nuclear weaponry. But times have changed, the nuclear option is a dinosaur,
both as far as energy supply and defence is concerned, and it is time to end
the nuclear illusion once and for all.

WHO cannot be trusted

The World Health Organisation (WHO), which should have been
an independent regulator of nuclear safety, has long abandoned this obligation.
In 1959, the WHO signed an agreement (WHA 12-40) with IAEA that effectively
gave the IAEA responsibility for health issues arising from the civilian use of
nuclear power. The terms of the agreement are freely available to the public [13]
but they are still not widely known, with the result that most people are
unaware that reports and other documents that purport to have major input from
the WHO, the agency set up by the UN in 1948 to deal with international health
issues, are actually from the IAEA, the body whose mission is to promote the
nuclear industry. The WHO has put its name on documents such as the 2003-2005
report of the Chernobyl Forum [14] that it had little to do with; it could not
have because it has no department for nuclear health and no experts in the
field. Its report on Fukushima, similarly, cannot be trusted [15] (WHO
Report on Fukushima a Travesty, SiS 55)

IndependentWHO, an organisation
concerned about the dangers of nuclear power in general and the consequences of
Chernobyl and Fukushima in particular, demands the revision of agreement WHA
12/40, and has held a vigil outside WHO headquarters in Geneva every working
day since April 2007 to draw attention to the crime of non-assistance to the
victims of Chernobyl and now Fukushima. (For more, see its web site: http://independentwho.org/en/.)

Thanks
to the IndependentWHO, the editors of SiS were invited to the Scientific
and Citizen Forum on Radioprotection – From Chernobyl to Fukushima, 11-13 May
2012, Geneva, which the group organized. This led to the series of articles that
has been collected into the present report, Death Camp Fukushima Chernobyl.

Death Camp Fukushima Chernobyl

Death Camp Fukushima Chernobyl is a concise summary
of scientific evidence on:

The devastating health consequences of the Chernobyl radioactivity fallout suppressed by governments and pro-nuclear regulatory authorities

The real extent of the Fukushima fallout and health hazards faced by victims, both downplayed by the Japanese government and the regulatory authorities

New findings on the amplified health impacts of low dose ionizing radiation

Simple radioprotection measures.

It also shows why the official picture presented by
organisations such as the WHO is highly misleading, and why countries still
determined to go nuclear are clinging to obsolete energy and defence policies.

The report makes clear that children
living in the highly contaminated areas outside the official evacuation zone
around Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plants must be evacuated promptly in order to
avert a humanitarian disaster on the scale of Chernobyl. Concerted
international effort is needed to provide help for evacuating the children and
to continue health monitoring and research on radioprotection. Finally, a
global phase out of nuclear power is in order given that a combination of
renewable energy options can provide all our energy needs safely, sustainably
and at much more affordable costs for all, as we made the case thoroughly in
([16] Green Energies - 100%
Renewable by 2050, ISIS Report).

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There are 2 comments on this article so far. Add your comment above.

Eric L. Hanson Comment left 26th June 2012 07:07:54t is hard to believe that a website called Institute of Science in Society would publish such non-scientific drivel as this.
Claims of a million excess deaths as a result of Chernobyl are unfounded anti-nuclear propaganda.
See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Ncm8KwxWNg
Claims that the IAEA can prevent the WHO from releasing information on radiation related topics is also a myth. The two organizations have a standard information sharing agreement, that is all. Environmental journalist George Monbiot has shown this. http://www.monbiot.com/2011/04/13/why-this-matters/

Briseis Gatto Comment left 29th June 2012 05:05:43Eric, stating the other side's claims are non-scientific drivel, without immediately backing that up with point-by-point evidence, is hardly scientific! Instead it is a smear, and seems to be an ill-tempered attempt at bullying, a *political* activity to support a party line, "nuclear is good"---not scientific debate.
You don't get to make reality go away by simply claiming something is "unfounded anti-nuclear propaganda"--and certainly not by referral to a youtube video. There are lots of propaganda videos on youtube.
Your video, Eric, seems to feature some "qualified" people; however, it is well known that folks often have conflicts-of-interest. In general we should suspect that people may not look impartially at the risks of technologies, the existence of which results in their paycheck. This fascinating 1980 interview from the New Scientist with physics Ph.D. Ernest Sternglass, makes some of those conflicts clear:
http://books.google.com/books?id=59-_mdEJoRkC&pg=PA198&dq=sternglass+westinghouse&hl=en&ei=WQewTeqxO4P0vwPEvMCUBw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=8&ved=0CEQQ6AEwBw#v=onepage&q=sternglass%20westinghouse&f=false
Journalist have conflicts too, and even ones with a reputation for fearless truth-telling can become corrupt. According to John Pilger, Monbiot's recent work on press inadequacy has been particularly unbalanced: "Not a word from Monbiot reminds us that two credible studies found that the BBC...had been virtually a Blair government mouthpiece in the run up to the bloodbath....
‘When Monbiot complains that the “corporate press” has “hobbled progressive politics”, he is dead right. His omissions serve the same purpose.’ (Email, December 24, 2011)
http://www.medialens.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=662:silence-of-the-lambs-&catid=25:alerts-2012&Itemid=69